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TotalBiscuit's epic rant about new XB1 PC streaming for Windows 10

qubit

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Stream your Xbox One games to a Windows 10 PC for poor picture quality and lag! It should be streaming from the PC to the Xbox One instead, according to TotalBiscuit's epic rant.

You can just picture this guy facepalming over and over as he rants about it, lol.

 
LOL, and yes that's all backwards but then MS are kinda backwards when it comes to supporting gaming on PC.
 
After having just got into in-home streaming there is a very good reason this doesn't work particularly well, in fact there are more than one.
In-home streaming requires a huge amount of network bandwidth, something wireless doesn't offer (most Xbox Ones are probably run on wireless). You can get away with powerline adapters, but they need to have gigabit ports for sensible bitrates. I got by on 100Mbit ports, but it wasn't ideal.

Then, for sensible bitrates, you need a good encoder on one end (the Xbox One), and a good decoder on the other (your PC). Software encoding/decoding is simply too slow, unless you PC is running an i5, but ideally an i7. Intel, AMD and NVidia all have hardware encoding and decoding features. AMD's GPU encoding and decoding is awful, stuttery, and altogether nowhere near as good as the others. NVidias is fast, but the quality of the image is very much sacrificed for the sake of speed. Intel's x86 software decoding is the best, but vastly too slow, however their Quicksync is excellent speed and excellent quality, the catch is the quality drops significantly when you're encoding down to below 4Mbit bitrates.

The XBox one as an encoder is not going to be quick, it may have many cores, but the hardware accelerated encoder is not particularly good, and the cores themselves have a very low clockspeed, so the encoding will have to be extremely light. Not to mention the fact that the XBox One hardware is going to be processing the game load as well. That video stream will then go down through your network, and if there's any lack of bandwidth if you're on wireless, or largely poor powerline bandwidth, you're going to lose frames. Once it hits your PC, you're then going to need hardware that can handle that encoded data stream and decode it at equal or better speeds. Although with the light encoding that the XBox one is capable of, you can probably get away with a HTPC style of processor based decoding. I use a Pentium with DXVA decoding or QuickSync when available, and that's dealing with quite a heavy bitrate stream.

Basically the bottleneck is going to be the XBox One hardware that's encoding it all in the first place, and the second bottleneck is the network, which most domestic users will probably have wireless connection instead of wired. There's going to be no real bandwidth available, and the loss of colour, framerate and general picture quality is going to be awful. With an i5 and 970 processing the game and using NVENC encoding, running through gigabit LAN, I can just stream at 1080@60p.
 
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Macrodaft to the rescue, yay! o_O
 
Is this Microsoft bringing "PC gaming back"?
 
I was actually expecting they would make xbox games playable on PC (I really would like to play "The last of us" on PC)
 
@RCoon: So it sounds like, bc of the xbone's weak encoding, that it in fact would work better from a powerful PC to the Xbone, opposite the direction MS touted, as long as you have a good wired network?

P.S. I loved the way you worked in your epic rant against MS and PC gaming! LMAO!
 
@RCoon: So it sounds like, bc of the xbone's weak encoding, that it in fact would work better from a powerful PC to the Xbone, opposite the direction MS touted, as long as you have a good wired network?

P.S. I loved the way you worked in your epic rant against MS and PC gaming! LMAO!

I get the impression MS is probably going to go cap-in-hand to AMD and ask them to create a more efficient encode method for the Jaguar cores. If they don't, their current encoder/decoder sucks, plus the 8 cores in the XBone are crazy weak. They won't be able to use the GPU because it'll be getting slaughtered by the game, so they'll be forced to use spare jaguar cores in the XBone. The XBone is a perfect client machine. Low powered, 8 full cores to do DXVA decoding from an encoded video source on a big PC system to run a game on proper high powered hardware. I just don't see how an XBone can process a game and also encode at the same time. The resources aren't there.

Plus, you need network bandwidth, and some people have some pretty crappy wireless connection in their homes. I've seen people successfully stream over wireless, but it was top of the line dual band 802.11n or 802.11ac with absolute rock solid connection @ 300mbps or 833mbps.

EDIT: In-Home streaming is possible, at 1080@60p, and fully enjoyable with the right setup and hardware. It works, it's great for having a house party and playing local multiplayer games downstairs on the TV on a couple of PS3 and Xbox controllers. You just need the right hardware and network, but a lot of companies are offering it without detailing the actual requirements for sensible quality. People are just going to end up with a crap impression of something because of misrepresentation.
 
I was actually expecting they would make xbox games playable on PC (I really would like to play "The last of us" on PC)

AFAIK, The Last of Us is a PS3/PS4 exclusive title...
 
AFAIK, The Last of Us is a PS3/PS4 exclusive title...
My bad. Just checked it, you were right PS3 and PS4.
 
It should make the PC to be able to play xbox games but no one would buy an xbox anymore if that happened lol.

Tbh at first glance it looks like a bad idea, streaming sub-1080p60fps games on a machine capable of doing more, but imo it actually has some uses in it.

It would be beneficial for slow desktops, laptops and tablets (kinda like onlive) and also be able to play xbox-exclusive games on PC, e.g. IF you are far away from your xbox and want to play some exclusives. some houses have their consoles on the living room and some are too lazy to leave their room/bed but has their laptop/tablet at their side, or maybe someone with higher authority than you in the house is watching TV and you can't use the console. that would be cool a feature. I can see the use for it.

I think playstation already does that though with PSVita/PS3-4 but with a specific OS(W10) it's far more flexible. Although I think the best way is for either consoles to get a deal with android/iOS to support streaming, that would be the best way to introduce console streaming.

anyway I'll still stick with my PC, I think I'll be skipping this console generation. I don't mind low visuals but I can't stand 30fps and below. Also, mods, steam, sales, etc. and I'm already starting to sound like those PC master race elitists.

EDIT: just watched the video and pretty much all the things i said here were mentioned by Totalbiscuit, and I agree with him
 
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Why would anyone want to do either?
 
RCoon, I am pretty sure Microsoft HAS thought this more or less through.
 
"You can play Xbox games in a different room... Slower".

Yep.

Microsoft is somewhat clueless, what a shame. Here's to hoping Steam's O/S becomes more viable in the future.
 
RCoon, I am pretty sure Microsoft HAS thought this more or less through.


i think more less then more xD

more laggy console games on pc from ms?

shocker!
 
Basically the bottleneck is going to be the XBox One hardware .
spot on

regarding the video,i have never seen a woman with thicker legs
 
.............and here we go....

Free OS to upgrade too from 7 or 8/8.1, that comes with all these new features, and people still feel the need to rant..........ITS FREE PEOPLE, also don't like it, don't support it. Ranting won't change shit.
 
.............and here we go....

Free OS to upgrade too from 7 or 8/8.1, that comes with all these new features, and people still feel the need to rant..........ITS FREE PEOPLE, also don't like it, don't support it. Ranting won't change shit.

I basically agree, but still, it is pathetic how MS keeps trying to tout their support for gaming, and suggesting to do something that will result in awful performance and picture by going from Xbone to PC.
 
I basically agree, but still, it is pathetic how MS keeps trying to tout their support for gaming, and suggesting to do something that will result in awful performance and picture by going from Xbone to PC.

Sure, I won't disagree with that, but it should be pretty obvious to EVERYONE now, that Xbox is Microsoft's gaming baby, and it started being evident with Xbox -> Xbox 360.
 
Sure, I won't disagree with that, but it should be pretty obvious to EVERYONE now, that Xbox is Microsoft's gaming baby, and it started being evident with Xbox -> Xbox 360.
Hehehe...that it is, that it is.
 
.............and here we go....

Free OS to upgrade too from 7 or 8/8.1, that comes with all these new features, and people still feel the need to rant..........ITS FREE PEOPLE, also don't like it, don't support it. Ranting won't change shit.
I don't think this is the point. The point is Microsoft was proclaiming that Windows 10 would get back to the PC gamer. What a joke. lol.

Besides, you are literally a Microsoft spokesman.
 
GFWL was essentially malware that MS created, and when it was found that PC players slaughtered console gamers they hushed it up and acted like the stupid points shit system they made that was unmarketable to PC was their intention, then let it die in the corner of starvation.

Then they slap PC gamers again by not porting games over as the difficult games they make on console are cakewalk for PC gamers and refuse to make the game worthwhile.

MS seriously needs to move to a modular architecture for Windows, make the basic OS free, then you pay for features like WMC, WMP, dumbed down SOHO Sharepoint, Premium system features like much better file keeping and maintenance/unlimited CPU/RAM hardware accelerated virtual OS support.


If I had a OS that automatically used metadata to organize content, back-grounded file conversions, marked duplicates for deletion, kept itself clean, could boot to a hardened mode for gaming and or for fault tolerance, and supported multiple concurrent users from other devices I would pay $200 for it, and all these things are available in additional software for windows now, but all are bloated, may have issues with other software, and cost more.
 
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